New Release!

Kate Morgan, a single mother, lives in the small town of Storyville, Ohio where she grew up. A want-to-be author, she works as a sales clerk in the town’s only department store doing what she describes as “a job a monkey could do.” Although she’s bored with her job, she’s reluctant to consider making any major changes in her life. However, she’s about to find out that change is inevitable.

When Kate’s ten-year-old daughter, Mandy, tells the family she plans to do a family tree for a school project, the negative reaction of Kate’s parents and grandmother shocks her but also arouses her curiosity. Why are they so against Mandy’s project? Surely her family is too “normal” to have any skeletons in their closet.

Kate decides to support her daughter even if that means defying her parents. As she searches for the truth, she discovers some long buried secrets that, if she chooses to reveal them, will change her life and the lives of the people she loves – forever.

http://tinyurl.com/8sd2cz4

Coming Soon!

As I promised last week, here’s the final cover for Secrets in Storyville. The book is a standalone mystery completely different than and separate from my Malone mystery series.

Writing this book has been an eye-opener for me in many ways. Because this was the first novel I’d ever written in the first person, I made a few mistakes. For example, when one of my beta-readers finished reading it and gave me his feedback, I was shocked to see how many times I, as the author, had intruded on the story. Phrases like “Trust me” and “You wouldn’t believe” needed to be cut immediately – and they were. I was also appalled to see how many exclamation points I’d used. Mary Higgins Clark may be the “Queen of Suspense” but I deserved the title “The Queen of Exclamation Points.” That was something else I needed to – and did – fix.

While I loved the characters in my Malone mystery series, I had so much fun creating new ones and getting to know them. Plus, after writing five books set in “real” places, it was an adventure to set the story in a fictional town, a product of my imagination, where there were no geographic or historical limitations.

Because there are so many “firsts” with this book, especially the fact that I’ll be self-publishing for the first time, I’m as nervous and apprehensive as I was when I sent my first book, Mixed Messages, to my publisher. I didn’t know what to expect then and I feel the same way now. But, I’m also excited and eager to hold the book in my hands. I’ve rewritten, edited and revised my manuscript more times than I can count and, like a mother bird, it’s time to push my baby from the nest.